MY COMPANION AND I were sitting in an Amsterdam cafe recently when I picked up a newspaper and saw the headline: The bishops of the Anglican Communion, at their every-ten-years Lambeth conclave in England, had voted 526 to 70 to declare homosexuality incompatible with Scripture. Liberal Anglicans, I read, were in shock.
Well, I wasn't. I knew that while the Episcopal Church (to which I belong) is one of America's most liberal denominations, the Anglican Communion (to which it belongs) is overwhelmingly conservative. Its greatest numbers are in Africa, where its leaders-excepting the saintly Desmond Tutu and a few brave likeminded souls-tend to be fundamentalists who view homosexuality as a "Western disease."
That less-than-attractive side of Anglicanism showed its face a few years ago when Anglican bishops in Zimbabwe seconded President Robert Mugabe's support for antigay violence. The incident was brought to mind by an encounter at Lambeth between a gay Christian leader and a Nigerian bishop who, shouting "Repent!", laid hold of the man and attempted to exorcise his homosexual demons.
Repent indeed. The same issue of the Amsterdam newspaper that reported the Lambeth vote also profiled a Zimbabwean soccer player who was in town for the Gay Games. In an accompanying photograph, the anonymous player covered his face with a soccer ball. This, the article explained, was necessary given that "homosexuality is forbidden in Zimbabwe and can be punished with ten years in prison." That punishment enjoys the support of Zimbabwe's Anglican bishops.
No, the antigay vote at Lambeth didn't surprise me. What did surprise me was the tepid reaction of supposedly pro-gay Episcopal bishops, who with few exceptions responded to vicious antigay bullying with either total silence or tame demurrals. Most outrageous of all, the Episcopal Church's relatively new Presiding Bishop, Frank Griswold, who has presented himself as gay-friendly, abstained on the antigay resolution and waited a week before offering up, by way of explanation, an elegantly worded-but, to me, thoroughly unconscionable and cowardly-apologia for appeasement.
Like Griswold, most of the liberal American bishops at Lambeth seemed less concerned with championing justice for gay people than with the fear that by defending us they would open themselves up to charges of divisiveness or racism. The one U.S. bishop who did speak up prominently for the gay and lesbian members of his flock, John Shelby Spong of Newark, was in fact accused of racism and ended up apologizing for suggesting that some African bishops' theology was less advanced than his own.
It was bizarre to read of the Lambeth vote in the Netherlands, where antigay bigotry is almost entirely unheard of. I was struck by the irony that an essentially secular country could make me feel so spiritually whole while my own church was capable of such spiritual destructiveness. Somehow the Dutch have no trouble choosing sides when hatred is in the air; yet American bishops whom I had been persuaded to think of as pro-gay chose to sit on the fence while bullies beat up on us.
In light of all this, I've been wondering: why do I remain an Episcopalian? I became one, some ten years ago, largely because I admire the Anglican theological tradition, with its regard for mind, conscience, reason, experience, and theological diversity. Yet that tradition plainly means little to many Anglican bishops. I've done my share of evangelism, bringing friends to church and talking up the joys of Episcopal worship; after the Lambeth vote, however, I won't be encouraging anyone to join a church whose leaders refuse to stand up unequivocally for its gay and lesbian members.
Hanging outside almost every Episcopal church is a little blue and white sign that reads "The Episcopal Church Welcomes You." I used to be happy when I saw one of those signs on my travels; they made me feel I wasn't far from home, after all. The vote at Lambeth-and, especially, my Presiding Bishop's abstention-changed that. The signs now seem to me, frankly, something of a lie.